Critical Summary of Does Peace Have a Chance by John Horgan
Added on 2023-06-03
5 Pages963 Words397 Views
Running Head: ENGLISH 1
Critical Summary
Author's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Introduction
Critical Summary
Author's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Introduction
ENGLISH 2
The paper makes a critical evaluation of “Does Peace Have a Chance” by John Horgan
(Horgan 2009). John Horgan is an American scientific writer, and in his writing, he challenges
the conventions about the inevitability of war. He argues that war was just a 12,000-year trend
and looking at the drop in the deaths due to war in the past fifty years, the possibility of another
war might just be dying down.
Horgan draws attention to the recent decline in war casualties when compared to the
prehistorical eras and makes one wonder if the epoch of international war may be nearing its end.
He offers facts based on figures and statistics. For example, the 2009 Yearbook of SIPRI states
death of 25,600 combatants and civilians due to armed conflicts and the majority of these deaths
occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka. When one compress the data to people getting
killed every year for other reasons, like automobile accidents and violent crimes there is a much
higher number and almost 500,000. 2008 report on the Global Burden of Armed Violence shows
remarkably low numbers when one compared to historical figures. State-sponsored genocide
during the 20th century shows an average of 3.8 million killings per year and the number are
certainly much higher. The Independent's calculations assert that there are more than 20 s going
on in the world and ceasefires, and peace accords keep many warring parties separated. The
active terrorist campaigns are on a steady rise (Independent, 2002).
However, when one compares these figures to the prehistoric ones, they get even higher.
Horgan takes the examples of “War Before Civilization,” an influential book by the
anthropologist Lawrence Keeley that holds violence and crime to be responsible for 25 percent
of all deaths. There is little evidence for violence among the societies before 12,000 years ago.
The coming centuries saw war emerge and spread rapidly, especially in those regions where
people lived a sedentary lifestyle and with the rise in population. The wars developed because of
The paper makes a critical evaluation of “Does Peace Have a Chance” by John Horgan
(Horgan 2009). John Horgan is an American scientific writer, and in his writing, he challenges
the conventions about the inevitability of war. He argues that war was just a 12,000-year trend
and looking at the drop in the deaths due to war in the past fifty years, the possibility of another
war might just be dying down.
Horgan draws attention to the recent decline in war casualties when compared to the
prehistorical eras and makes one wonder if the epoch of international war may be nearing its end.
He offers facts based on figures and statistics. For example, the 2009 Yearbook of SIPRI states
death of 25,600 combatants and civilians due to armed conflicts and the majority of these deaths
occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka. When one compress the data to people getting
killed every year for other reasons, like automobile accidents and violent crimes there is a much
higher number and almost 500,000. 2008 report on the Global Burden of Armed Violence shows
remarkably low numbers when one compared to historical figures. State-sponsored genocide
during the 20th century shows an average of 3.8 million killings per year and the number are
certainly much higher. The Independent's calculations assert that there are more than 20 s going
on in the world and ceasefires, and peace accords keep many warring parties separated. The
active terrorist campaigns are on a steady rise (Independent, 2002).
However, when one compares these figures to the prehistoric ones, they get even higher.
Horgan takes the examples of “War Before Civilization,” an influential book by the
anthropologist Lawrence Keeley that holds violence and crime to be responsible for 25 percent
of all deaths. There is little evidence for violence among the societies before 12,000 years ago.
The coming centuries saw war emerge and spread rapidly, especially in those regions where
people lived a sedentary lifestyle and with the rise in population. The wars developed because of
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